By Nancy Spannaus Dec. 24, 2020—There is one gift all Americans[1] have under their proverbial Christmas tree this holiday season. It is a gift bequeathed to us over a period of centuries by those who dedicated their lives to building our nation according to the principles of serving the general […]
By Angela Vullo December 17, 2020–As Christmas 2020 approaches, images of the same time period in 1932 come to mind: unemployment lines, swamped food banks, eviction notices, and more. The images are only overshadowed by the staggering number of deaths and other effects of the current deadly pandemic. While the […]
In celebration of his 250th birthday By Nancy Spannaus Dec. 15, 2020—Two hundred and fifty years ago, on December 16, 1770, the world welcomed the birth of the man I call the “Composer of Freedom,” Ludwig van Beethoven. Let us celebrate Beethoven today for his historical and ongoing contributions to […]
A Follow-Up on the Charges that Alexander Hamilton Was an “Enslaver” By Nancy Spannaus Dec. 11, 2020—Thorough documentation has been published by Hamilton scholar Michael Newton and the pseudonymous Philo Hamilton, ripping apart the fallacies in the recent essay by Jessie Serfilippi labeling Alexander Hamilton an “enslaver.” The question is: […]
By Nancy Spannaus Dec. 7, 2020–The newly released 2020-2021 edition of Bulletin of Loudoun County History contains a story that will come as a surprise to many: Loudoun County, Virginia was a stronghold of the Federalist Party up until the demise of that institution in 1817. Indeed, this fact even […]
By Nancy Spannaus Dec. 3, 2020–With the election all but over, Wall Street is finally back in the news. Hearings in the Congress this week brought sharp confrontations over the way the Trump administration’s rescue packages for the COVID-struck economy (like the Obama rescue packages before it) have fed the […]
By Angela Vullo November 29, 2020–In the 1950s and ‘60s when a young person in our country was asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, the answer was likely to be an astronaut, a doctor, a teacher, or an engineer. But, as time went on and […]
By Nancy Spannaus November 26, 2020—Contrary to popular culture, Thanksgiving Day in the United States was never just about family. From the time of the Pilgrims, to George Washington, to Abraham Lincoln, it was about humbly expressing our gratitude for surviving as a nation (or a community), and committing ourselves […]
By Nancy Spannaus Nov. 21, 2020—When FDR’s relief expert Harry Hopkins told FDR about the looming emergency for tens of millions of Americans in the winter of 1933-34, FDR authorized action. If nothing were done, Hopkins had said, people would starve en masse. Immediate action was needed, because, as he […]
By Nancy Spannaus April 5, 2021—I was very happy to see the recent article by Oren Cass of the American Compass, entitled “We’re Just Speculating Here…, The Rise of Wall Street and the Fall of American Investment.” In a lengthy footnoted piece, replete with informative graphics, Cass documents the ways […]
By Nancy Spannaus March 22, 2021—Over the last two days, two prominent advocates for Alexander Hamilton have come forward to defend Hamilton’s legacy as a visionary statesman, including against the charges that he was an “enslaver.” These important initiatives came from Douglas Hamilton, Hamilton’s fifth-great-grandson, who directly took on the […]
Draft Legislation To Create a Bank of the United States for Infrastructure and Manufacturing
An American System Mindset for 2021
By Nancy Spannaus Jan. 1, 2021—The transition to a new year is a traditional time for in-depth reflection on the state of our nation and ourselves, and this year, it is more urgent than ever. A huge portion of our citizenry, faced with the horrors of the pandemic, unemployment, opioid […]